[The following article appeared in the September 26 issue of Inprecor, a fortnightly published in Paris under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The translation from French is by Intercontinental Press.]
Lebanon is once more convulsed by military conflicts whose roots lie in a tangle of religious international factors. While Walid and Jumblatt's Druse forces in the mountainous Shuf region and the Amal organization's Shi'ite forces confront the rebuilt Lebanese army and the Phalangist Christian militias, the United States is parading its fleet off the Lebanese coast and increasing its military contingent on land.
For its part, the Zionist government is threatening reprisals against the Druse and their Syrian government backers if they go beyond a certain "red line" during these confrontations.
Impossible national consensus
The Zionist aggression in Lebanon in the spring of 1982 had led to the installation in Lebanon of a reactionary regime under the leadership of Amin Gemayel (following the assassination of his brother, Bashir). At the time of Gemayel's installation, there was a climate of national consensus. This was unquestionably a success for the imperialists and, at the same time, was a solution that did not displease the reactionary governments of the Arab countries.
In its majority the Lebanese bourgeoisie arrayed itself around the new president, Amin Gemayel, and sought the reunification of the country after a decade of deep-going break-up, the elimination of all the Palestinian positions in Lebanon, and the withdrawal of all the occupation forces. This plan did not work out.
Already by the beginning of the year, conflicts had broken out in various regions of the country, putting an end to what turned out to be a totally illusory national consensus. One year after the last Israeli aggression, Amin Gemayel's government controlled only the capital and its environs.
For several weeks, the struggle has been raging in Beirut as well. The international airport, which the Lebanese government wanted to make the symbol of its reconstituted power, is the target of shelling by Druse and Syrian forces and is even the site of direct confrontations.
In the Shuf mountains, the conflicts between religious communities resumed with extreme violence. Northern Lebanon remains a powder keg that is totally outside the central regime's control. In many aspects Lebanon seems to have returned to a situation comparable to that of the 1975-76 civil war.
This is the result, first of all, of the fact that after the departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization's forces from Beirut no progress was made in solving the Palestinian problem and rearranging the regional situation.
In addition, it is a consequence of the fact that the new Lebanese regime has found it impossible to work out an overall accord with the state of Israel, which had played a decisive role in putting it in power.
Nor has Amin Gemayel in fact played the role of an arbiter in the name of "national solidarity." In rebuilding the Lebanese bourgeois state he has basically relied on the Phalangist apparatus and militias, which inevitably led to growing conflicts with the other forces on the scene and to relaunching the war between religious communities.
Finally, in a more immediate sense, the present situation is also the result of the withdrawal of Israeli troops to the Awali River in southern Lebanon.
A number of factors explain this withdrawal, which was carried out in spite of pressures exerted by Washington, which viewed it as premature.
First of all the Zionist government cannot contemplate occupying a large part of Lebanese territory for an indeterminate period of time. Such a situation could embroil the Israeli forces in a bloody struggle against a growing popular resistance and could have serious repercussions in Israel itself.
Moreover, the Zionist leaders are not at all unhappy to see the present tendency toward a partition of the country, which the withdrawal of Israeli troops has further encouraged.
One ought not forget that the Zionist leaders have never made a secret of their plans for the Balkanization of Lebanon, where they are especially interested in the formation of a minuscule Druse buffer state between Israel and Syria. This, among other reasons, is why on several occasions they have been in connivance with the so-called progressive forces of Walid Jumblatt, which in turn did not fire a single shot during the Israeli invasion last year.
More concretely, at present Israel may favor a partition that would result in maintaining Israeli control over southern Lebanon and accepting Syrian control over the Bekaa Valley and the north. It is true that this plan is not easy to carry out, particularly since the imperialist countries are not inclined to favor anything that strengthens Syria's positions, since Syria remains the sole ally of the Soviet bureaucracy in the region. But this does not prevent the Zionist leadership's policy from containing a tendency toward partition of Lebanon.
Social stakes and religious cleavages
While it might be pertinent to note the present resemblance to the situation in the 1975- 76 civil war, we should not ignore the fact that the situation is not exactly the same. In 1975- 76 the Palestinian resistance played a major role, and the general content of the situation was defined by the Israeli-Arab conflict. The national, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist factor therefore had an unquestionable weight.
In the present confrontations the Palestinians are only a supplemental force. The former ians are only a supplemental force. The former components of the progressive front are divided and are not - for now — mobilized fundamentally around anti-imperialist and anti- Zionist goals.
In other words, in the civil war that is developing today, the social and political stakes are blurred and distorted by the cleavages between religious communities. This is due on the one hand to the PLO's defeat, which was marked by its withdrawal from Lebanon, and the retreat of the Lebanese workers and national movement itself; and on the other hand to the failure of the reactionary plan for reunification within the framework of the Gemayel regime. In such a context, the centrifugal tendencies grow, and the main element around which the different forces coalesce becomes or reverts to the religious element, with the hellish logic that entails (religious communities coalescing around a goal of self-defense and survival and increasingly fierce opposition to the other "religious communities").
Viewed from this angle, Lebanon seems to be in the process of returning to the kind of terrible wrenching apart seen in the last century, leading to situations in which outside forces
WALID JUMBLATT
can intervene while claiming to play the role of pacifiers and arbiters.
Imperialist responsibility
In fact, the outside forces simultaneously exploit and counteract the conflicts between religious communities. Under the pretext of "pacification," the imperialists are increasingly intervening in support of the "legal" Lebanese government, meaning the reactionary forces.
The international so-called interposition force is being used more and more openly against Jumblatt's Druse and the Shi'ite militias — even though neither of them had the slightest intention of challenging the fundamental framework of the neocolonial regime - and in support of the reactionary government of Amin Gemayel. In a lovely show of unanimity, the British government sends its Jaguars to fly over the Shuf, the French government makes a display with its Super-Etendards, and the Italian contingent threatens the Druse forces, while the U.S. troops, heavily reinforced, are now authorized, in the words of a White House spokesman, to "use the weapons at their disposal, their tanks."
This is the fundamental reality in which the workers and revolutionary movement throughout the world, and especially in the imperialist countries, must determine their attitude and activity.
If the Lebanese masses are ever to be in a position where they can defend their legitimate interests, and if Lebanon is ever to be able to democratically reorganize in a way that is not based on religious communities, imperialism must be prevented from imposing its solution to the conflict. The imperialist solution is to install a reactionary regime throughout the country, to eliminate what remains of the Palestinian forces in Lebanon, and to establish a new regional framework that corresponds to the interests and aspirations of the Zionists.
To oppose these reactionary plans, it is necessary to continue to mobilize for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Zionist troops from all of Lebanon and for the withdrawal of the multinational interposition force. This task is a vital component of the more general battle against all the imperialist war threats throughout the world.